


Armored Rose

by WhatOtherPlanet



Category: Armored Core (Video Games), RWBY
Genre: AU where hunters fight with giant robots, Crossover, For reasons, Gen, Self-indulgent and lightly edited, probably not going to get past the first four chapters, probably shipping if this ever gets past the first four chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-01-16 14:39:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18523594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatOtherPlanet/pseuds/WhatOtherPlanet
Summary: The grimm are getting stronger. The Arms Forts designed to hold them off are falling, turned back against their human masters. Yet, even as the great titans of the last age turn on humanity, as the kingdoms hunker behind their ever-crumbling walls, humanity endures.Twenty-five years ago Team STRQ led a renaissance among hunters. Piloting new machines called NEXTs, huge second bodies which intensified their own auras, they stood against the nightmares and prevailed, for a time. Now the next generation of hunters trains feverishly, and hope lingers in the hearts of many that this, at last, is the final penstroke in the long tragedy of life among the grimm.That's the hope, at any rate.





	1. 00-A: Red Like Roses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This](https://armoredcore.fandom.com/wiki/Spirit_of_Motherwill) is what Ruby's fighting.
> 
> Music choice has to be [The Mother Will Comes Again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt_d9YJgyqg) from the AC Verdict Day OST.

The ocean was calm today. Seagulls pinwheeled in the sky, their calls carrying out across the empty beach. They perched on the old remains of houses and offices, hollowed out shells. They nested there, in humanity's wreck.

They took flight as silence shattered.

She sliced along the beach like a knife, awash in the brutal forces of physics. Wind and dust ripped at carbon-alloy flesh as the array of rockets roared on her back, their heat tickling as it washed across her aura. Empty buildings rising from the beachfront rushed at her like assailants, but she wove through them, her focus set ahead. Her target was waiting.

The first shell went wide, slamming into a building just ahead of her. The next nearly clipped her, carrying with it the promise of annihilation as it spun off to blow apart the shallows waves. She altered her trajectory, banking out over the land as more and more fire poured forth from the same distant point. Thousands of tons of explosives slammed into the beach, shattering abandoned buildings and scattering melting sand into the air. Soon, it would resettle into the ground, reformed into shards of colored glass, but she wasn't looking at that, her focus was only on the great dark thing, tall in the distance.

The fuel indicator light flicked on. She cut the boost.

The intricate skeletonworks shattered, coming free from her back and scattering across the beach. The thrusters fell with them, and were mangled to nothingness as they crashed into the sand at the speed of sound, but she still soared, dropping through the air. New fires lit—on her hips, small of back, knees, shoulders. Her aura laced through them, her soul mingling with the engines, with the fire itself, strengthening all that they were. She caught herself, fighting gravity and twisting against the coercive will of inertia. She pulsed her thrusters, and she flew.

A warning light flashed on her screen, but it came too slow. She'd already moved, shifting sideways in a blast of fire as the first missiles slashed past her, scattering into the ground in a wide spread or arcing off into the sea. She dashed forward, hitting the beach finally with a tremendous shock. Her feet cut into the sand, then slid into the churning waves, but the fires kept her afloat, canceling out her mass. Her feet skimmed the water, cutting troughs and scattering wildlife as she looked ahead at the thing rising before her.

She could see it now, and clearly. The shape of it, rising to blot out the sky. Half its feet were in the ocean, half trudging along the beach. Huge and terrible and soulless. It had been a beautiful thing once. Terribly impractical, certainly, but still elegant in its sheer presence.

She couldn't help but smile. _People_ _ **built** this,_ she thought,  _it's incredible._

But it wasn't something human anymore, was it? As she drew closer, as the flashes of gunfire and missile bursts grew fevered and frantic, she saw the evidence of that herself.

The dark splotches all across the hull of the thing looked like dried bloodstains. They coated the huge machine's six legs as they slowly fell to crush an old building to rubble beneath, seeping out from the joints. The darkness wove like vines around each gunbarrel, around each missile tube and feed line. In some places they'd replaced damaged parts with strange, alien sinew. In other places, red eyes stood out from the black, tracking her approach with emotionless focus.

Between it all, she could still make out the old name, the faded paint still clear against the great machine's old metal hull.

_ABP Arms Fort_

_Spirit of Motherwill_

She smiled as she kicked off the ground, rising to meet the charge, even as the great machine stopped its slow march towards the city, its great winged platforms spreading out welcome her onslaught, as swarms of smaller machines finally emerging from their hangars. She soared in, landing, her feet screeching across the deck as she pivoted. The rifle in her right hand barked, blowing holes in enemy after enemy as the gauntlet on her left wrist ignited, forming a long, curved blade as red as her armor. Missiles slammed into the deck, always a step behind her evasions.

The sickle-sword slashed through the launchers, igniting the magazines and sending plumes of fire into the sky behind her. The pipes on the underside of the platforms cooked off as well, chaining back to the central shaft. The whole arms fort seemed to howl, as the great guns turned blindly above her, trying in vain to get a bead on the tiny speck which was ripping them apart.

She pitied the things, so she flashed up, sliding between the barrels at the speed of sound, dragging her blade to slice through them.

The explosions shook the whole dead city. The arms fort swayed, its legs shifting to catch it, but then another explosion rang out. The little machines, began to flee, but they were too slow to escape Motherwill's collapse.

As the central shaft filled with the eruptions of munitions and reactors, a last barrage of fire arced out towards the tiny dot that was leaving now, darting off through the blue sky.

* * *

The Spirit of Motherwill died loud. The pillar of fire and smoke stayed for days, and even those in far off Vale, those who hadn't even known the old machine was coming, could see the rise of it over the hills. Many sailors heard the sound, carrying far across the still ocean.

* * *

She didn't look back as it happened. She just shook herself, falling back into her real body for a moment as Crescent Rose hummed around her, cooling from the excessive maneuvers.

A light on the console marked an incoming call. She flicked a switch.

_"Dammit Ruby! You were supposed to wait for me to get there!"_

"Sorry Yang!" Ruby said, not feeling all that sorry. "But it was fine! I took care of it!"

 _"It was an_ **_arms fort!_ ** _You could have died!"_

"Well I didn't!" Ruby puffed out her cheeks. "We can talk about this later. I'll be back soon. Love you sis!"

_"Ruby—!"_

Click.


	2. 00-B: Mirror Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weiss faces her father's test.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For what it's worth, [this](https://armoredcore.fandom.com/wiki/00-ARETHA) is what Weiss is fighting. A corrupted version of it, anyhow.
> 
> And why not; Music choice: [Gravity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8dijsusZUw) from the Verdict Day OST.

It's strange, being linked to the Allegory Manipulation System.

The feeling is like being in two places. Being two people. In a sense, she literally  _ is— _ as far as her brain is concerned, she has a second spinal cord layered over the first. A second set of nerves, connected to a second set of muscles.

It's intoxicating. It's perilous. Without sufficient compatibility, the risk can be anything from permanent psychosis to instantaneous brain death. Without sufficient discipline, it's easy to lose oneself in the sensation, to forget the flesh completely.

To stop breathing. To stop beating your own heart.

But she has the compatibility. She has the discipline. And in the cockpit of her Myrtenaster, Weiss Schnee feels  _ whole. _

She stares down the practice field. Atlas floats far off in the distant sky, the faint specks of airships drifting around it.

Ahead of her, a cage rests on the frozen earth.

The metal is already warped. They couldn't keep this thing contained for long. She's not sure how they captured it in the first place, and she's not sure she wants to know.

It's pointed, sleek, built more like a plane or a racecar than a weapon of war, though its form is too exaggerated for the comparison to hold much weight. Huge shoulders, a head fused at the neck. She can see the lineage, the way its design preceded the high-speed types that Vale is so proud of today. It is a relic, but a dangerous one.

It snarls, as it rips the bolts out of its arm, black oil flowing down its fingers like blood. Maybe it  _ is  _ blood, now. It's certainly not a machine anymore, the orange-red eyes bursting between the plates of its armor tell that story well enough. The grimm infection has taken full hold.

She wonders if the pilot is in there somewhere. Whether he died quickly, or…

She shakes herself, rolling her shoulders. Her focus tightens as she falls into a ready stance, both bodies synchronized for a moment as she lets the flesh fall away entirely, becoming the machine she designed herself.

And with a final roar, the beast rips its way out of its shackles. Its weapons are on the ground before it, impossibly huge. Relics of the last generation, oversized tools for rendering the largest grimm to smoke and ash.

It snatches them up, and she  _ flies. _

The field drops away, as the euphoria strikes her again, the joy of flying under the raw power of her own thrusters. She doesn't have time to enjoy it today though, as the beast wrenches its huge cannon up, five barrels spinning as it fires absurdity at her, hot streams of heavy metal designed to rip apart grimm flesh and steel alike.

She weaves around it, whirling over and then under, then launching herself forty-five degrees at the ground, landing on her left foot and kicking off, lunging with her left arm extended.

Her blade ignites, pale blue fire stabbing at the heart of the living obscenity.

It screams, as she pierces it.

It fires its thrusters, and it's like staring into the sun. Weiss darts back on reflex, heels scraping the ground as she tries to find a rhythm again. She sees it, but then there's a flash and it's gone again. It's the kind of motion which would turn a human body to slush, but the only human body inside that thing has been dead for decades. She grits her teeth, as it rushes towards her at eight times the speed of sound.

She evades, arcing just out of its path as it tries to flatten her. It's so much bigger, its red eyes tracking her from all angles. She ignites her blade again, and it screams as it loses its balance, tripping and slamming into the ground before catching itself, stumbling to its feet. It's bleeding more now, staining the land with steaming black.

It screams, and lifts its other arm. A beam of white-hot matter soars past her, blowing the hill behind her apart.

She answers in kind, her own laser rifle crackling as it discharges. The pulses strike hard, melting armor and bursting the grimm flesh growing underneath.

It screams, and then it bursts towards her again.

She dodges, again.

But this time it doesn't work. A black hand grabs her, fingers digging into her face as her neck wrenches sharply.

It takes her a moment to understand what's just happened. A feint. Charging, only to veer into her dodge. She'd been predicted.

She'd always heard the grimm were getting smarter. Here was proof, she supposed.

The beast wrenches her off her feet. A wire in her neck snaps. It looks into her eyes, and she can see the pulsing flesh beneath its skin.

She feels its claws cut through her chest. She feels the controls ripped out of her hands as the cockpit crumples inward

She screams.

And her blade ignites. The arm severs, still rammed into her chest. She lands on her heels, stumbling as the thing reels, only for a second.

Then she moves again.

The emotion is draining away with her blood. She stabs again, then shoots, then  _ kicks,  _ knocking the thing's leg out from underneath it, misaligning its thrusters. It warbles as it falls onto its side, too surprised to scream this time.

She lifts her foot, and stomps on its face. Digging her heel into its eyes, shattering metal and glass and turning flesh to pulp. She lifts, stomps again, and the structure collapses entirely. Her foot clangs off its collar, coated in viscera. She lifts her blade, igniting it with her arm pulled back to aim, then stabs down into its chest, letting the blade sit there, immolating the cockpit, the core, everything.

A funeral pyre for that long-lost pilot.

As the last light goes out of the Grimm's eyes, Weiss Schnee smiles.

She's done it. She's won.

She's free.

Then the blood loss catches up with her, and there is only darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of a proof-of-concept idea I had floating around for a while. I've got a couple RWBY crossover ideas besides this, but I don't intend to pursue any of them while I'm still working on It Might Even Be Great. This one was just mostly done, so I figured why not put it out there and see what the response was like?
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! Lemme know if you think this is good, and I might write more of it! I probably want to at least cover RWBY's introductions (through homages to the four promo trailers).
> 
> Also of note: most of the crossover material is technically Armored Core: For Answer but I'm taking so many liberties and pulling so much from other AC games (and other mech stuff in general) that I figured a general AC tag would do.


End file.
